


All That We Have Left

by Squishy_TRex



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 23:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8466772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishy_TRex/pseuds/Squishy_TRex
Summary: Carl struggles to deal with the aftermath of their encounter with Negan. Thankfully, he isn't alone.  Post 7x01, "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be"





	

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently episode codas are my thing for this show? Anyway, I, much like everyone else, was devastated by this episode and felt personally attacked by the emotional intensity of the moments with Carl at the end. So this is my own form of catharsis because I needed to write something concerning my favorite relationship in the show.

The black line across Carl’s forearm stood out starkly against the clear light of day, almost like the bastard who drew it there was still mocking him from afar.  

Carl traced a finger across the line, pressing down as if he could wipe away the mark by touch alone. The coolness of his own hands was a balm compared to the slick feel of the marker against his skin he had endured. Or the rough hand of who had done it to him.

One of the first things he’d done after coming back was to wet a washcloth and scrub furiously at the mark, in the hopes of erasing it and the memory of what he’d come so close to. All he’d managed to do was redden the skin around it, the black line barely faded. It remained like a harsh reminder that even behind their walls, they couldn’t erase or hide from the truth; there was no safety.

Even when he started to let his guard drop, Carl knew that Alexandria wasn’t the safe haven they wanted. That just having walls didn’t mean anyone in their group was really protected.

It was one of the only times he can remember where being right made him feel worse.

Glaring at the streak, he felt every angry emotion that he’d burned through rise back up, like embers stirred up from ashes. His left hand curled into a fist and he felt his arm start to tremble, wanting nothing more than the chance to sock that smirking son of a bitch in his mouth. Again and again until he…until he-

Carl felt his breath catch and suddenly felt sick when thought about that asshole, about what happened, about what he _did_. And how all they could do was watch it happen.

Experience taught him there was no point in getting worked up, he knew that staying together, helping each other, making a plan, was the best thing to do. But right now all he wanted was to- to just-

A soft knock at the door interrupted his thoughts and he mentally pushed everything aside as he uncurled his fist and lifted his face so his one good eye could see who was at the door.

He’d left it ajar on purpose, not knowing whether anyone would come up to see him, but leaving the invitation anyway. There were at least two people he expected to check on him during the day and he was surprised it had only taken now for one of them to show up.

Thankfully, it was the one he most wanted to see.

“Can I come in?” Michonne asked, leaning against the doorway, her head tilted. But despite the pose she looked stiffer than usual, body still coiled in tension as a side effect of what happened.

“Uh, yeah,” Carl said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Without even thinking about it, he made room for her to sit beside him on the bed, pushing his hat aside. He didn’t really feel like looking at it anyway.

Michonne wordlessly accepted his offer and sat next to him, relaxing her posture just a fraction. Carl carefully avoided her gaze, which he knew from time spent together was now assessing him critically. When she was still new to the group, it annoyed him that she seemed to spend so much time staring at or looking after him. Now, he was glad for it, and like the walkers, moving from place to place, and losing people, it became a normal part of his life.

He appreciated having at least one good constant to weigh against all the bad.

“How’re you holding up?” Michonne asked. Carl glanced at her hand that rested between them, the fingers slightly dragging against the bedsheet. He shrugged.

“As well as anybody, I guess.” He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her, afraid not just of the way she was looking at him, but how it would make him feel.

With his own face pressed to the ground, Carl hadn’t been able to see Michonne’s face when she pleaded with that asshole to spare him, but the despair and desperation in her voice was enough to paint him a picture. He didn’t like thinking it might be the same expression she’s wearing now.

“Is dad…?” Carl asked, breaking the brief silence before it grew too long to be uncomfortable. He heard Michonne sigh, deep and with no small amount of exhaustion; it reminded him of long days with his mom, before everything, when the most upsetting thing that could happen would be dad coming home late.

“He needed to be alone,” she said at last. “Has to figure out what he’s going to tell everyone.” Carl nodded, feeling the unspoken question of how he would do that linger between them.

The thought that everything they’d suffered through in the last 24 hours, everyone they’d lost, would be condensed into a series of secondhand, matter of fact explanations riled up Carl’s anger again, like a dog whose hackles rose at the slightest provocation.

He shook his head, face scrunching into a scowl.

“There shouldn’t be anything to tell,” he said. “There shouldn’t…they should be –“ he bit off what he was going to say with a frustrated noise.

“I know,” Michonne replied. He felt the bed dip a little as she settled in closer. She didn’t finish his sentence, but they both knew what he wanted to say, what everyone had been thinking and feeling since they returned to Alexandria.

None of what they went through should have ever happened in the first place; they all didn’t survive some of the worst this new world had to offer just for some jackass with a wooden bat to come and smash it all to pieces. And now, they would have to tell the story over and over, constantly live through it, how in a matter of seconds they managed to lose two people, one whom Carl had known since the beginning.

He remembered how, in those early days, it didn’t seem like the world was going to hell, the reality hadn’t quite caught up to him. Even though, right before Shane had found them, he and his mom saw their neighbor of five years tear open her husband’s stomach and pull out his intestines like she was unraveling a long rope.

The camp near Atlanta had felt like a weird vacation, the kind you didn’t have any say in and was really being used as a cover for something upsetting, like a funeral. He hadn’t really wanted anything to do with anyone his own age, didn’t want any new friends, just his dad. But when Glen joined them, he made a habit of taking Carl down to the lake and showing him the best way to skip stones and shared funny stories of when he used to deliver pizzas. Carl didn’t realize it until now, but Glen was probably the first one to make him feel like things would be alright, even though the world was falling apart.

Now he was gone. And they all had to live without him, only able to hold onto his memory through stories, constant reminders that he wasn’t going to ever make it back like so many times before.

“It’s not fair,” Carl said, the words out before he could stop them.

Michonne didn’t respond this time, probably waiting for him to keep going. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his face, embarrassed that he made such a childish statement when he was light years away from childhood.

But it didn’t negate the truth of what he said: none of it was fair.

That Maggie had to watch her husband die in front of her and would be having her baby without him.

That Rosita and Eugene lost their friend and long-time companion by a stupid game of chance that asshole thought he had the right to play.

That Daryl had been taken away from them, probably thinking that he was the one responsible for Glenn’s death

That he ended up face down in the dirt, the two people who loved him most begging and pleading for him, losing whatever dignity they had left. 

That he had been more than ready to make a sacrifice for them, for everyone. And then was able to walk away free, not a scratch on him, while his dad was made an errand boy for the monster that left them devastated in a manner of minutes.

More than unfair, what happened just wasn’t…wasn’t _right._

“He should’ve done it,” Carl said, keeping his angered voice to little more than a whisper that managed to reverberate in the prolonged stillness of the room.

He said it, expecting an outburst, a rash of anger to match his own, anything to help fan the flames.

“You think that would’ve helped?” Michonne asked, using a calm voice he hadn’t been expecting. Despite the words, her tone was a wild cry from accusing; it felt more like an actual question, free of judgment. “You think that would have changed anything other than us losing even more than we already did?”

Carl felt the last bit of his anger spill over.

“Maybe!” he burst out, exhaling every upsetting feeling he contained, his heaving breaths emptying the room of its quiet.

The outburst made him brave enough to look Michonne in the eye, her face not what he was expecting, not critical or assessing.

He only saw the soft sadness of a mother who was watching her son fall apart and being unable to help him.

The anger left him in the speed of a fire doused with water.

“Maybe – maybe, I don’t know, dad would’ve been able to stand up to him or…I don’t know, we could’ve or…”

He felt drained, having no real answer of what good losing his arm would have done.

“It would’ve been better to lose my arm,” he finished, exerting control to push back the tremble from his voice.

“Maybe things would be different.”  Leaving those words to hang in the air, he turned his head away.

His downcast gaze landed back on the black mark still mocking him on the pale flesh of his arm. Hating its continued existence, he pressed his fingers into it, watching the skin redden and hoping he could fade it in favor of another color.

But the rush of red brought to mind where else he’d seen that color recently and he pulled back on the pressure so his fingers were only lightly resting on the mark.

Slumping forward, the last bit of any fight or anger completely draining out of him, Carl felt nothing but exhaustion. And a strong sense of shame that he managed to bury amongst the anger and sadness and pain. Hiding it from everyone, including himself. So many other people walked away with devastating losses, others didn’t walk away at all, and he, all he had walked away with was this small black line.

“I know right now it’s hard to believe, but nothing that happened out there is on you,” she said gently.

Carl, looked up at her, shocked at how easily she had cut to the heart of what he was feeling. Despite how softly it was said, the firm look on her face underscored the seriousness of her words and he clung to it, trying to believe what she was saying.

“Nobody out there is going to be angry or upset with you for being able to come back,” she added and Carl felt himself crumple.

“But I was there,” he pressed. “I was ready and I was ok with it and I…” he trailed off as the memory resurfaced, feeling all over again the gritty dirt against his cheek, the effort of keeping his arm still as he told his dad to get it over with.

“Why?” he asked, his voice sounding weak, on the verge of a hiccup, something he used to do when he was little and close to tears.  “Why did he give up?” He swallowed. “He’s done worse to save us before, why was this-” He shook his head, feeling disgusted at what he was thinking of.

Pressing his lips into a thin line and closing his eyes, Carl thought about everything they’d been through, every time his dad had promised to protect them and had come through every time, no matter how impossible it seemed.

Not this time. His dad had been just as helpless as any of them, put in a position where he was only able to watch, not save anyone.

 _But that’s not true_ , Carl thought. _There’s one person dad saved._

He was the only one his dad had been able to help. Not anyone else.

And that was the real problem, the one that churned his gut and sent slight tremors in his body.

 “How–how can I go back down there, knowing that my dad was able to save me, but not anyone else?” Carl whispered, feeling slight pricks in his good eye.

The question had been buried in the back of his mind since he was able to walk away with his arm intact.

And voicing it aloud felt like his fears had grown legs and walked out of his head. He caught motion to his side with his remaining eye and for half a second, thought Michonne was leaving him. He wouldn’t blame her; but she didn’t. Instead, she was reaching out, coming closer.

“Oh baby,” he heard Michonne say, her voice aching. She gently pulled his hand away from worrying the marker line, covering it up completely with her own hand and blocking it from his vision.

She brought up her other hand to gently brush through his messy hair, carefully pushing what she could out his face. The touch, so much like his mom before all of this, reminded him so much of a home he didn’t feel he deserved and he felt a single tear roll down his cheek. Michonne tenderly wiped it away in a single motion.

 “The walkers, people, this world…it’s taken everything from us,” she said, sounding hoarse all of a sudden.  

“All we have left is each other.”

Her words seemed to echo throughout the room, only interrupted by the distant cawing of a few birds. Michonne’s hand, welcome warmth emanating from it, had migrated towards his cheek, thumb resting against the gauze just below where his right eye used to be.

She closed her eyes, as if it was too much to even look at him right now. They were squeezed tight for a moment, but as soon as they opened, the stare leveled at him was nothing less than devastated.

 “Back there, we thought he was done taking from us after the second time,” she said, the hand pressed against his arm trembling slightly. “That it was over and we could leave.”

She took in a deep breath, as if the very act of breathing was weighing on her.

“But then he grabbed you and pushed you into the dirt and put your dad in the worst position imaginable.”

Carl felt himself starting to tremble in earnest as he remembered Michonne calling out, pleading for Carl to be spared. That she was willing to do, say whatever it took to keep him safe. It hurt so much to hear it. To know that it was because of him was even worse.

 “I need you to understand something,” she continued. “This isn’t your fault and your dad did everything he could do,” as if she could read his mind and wanted to dissuade his train of thought. “There wasn’t anything he could’ve done to save Abraham.” He heard her breath catch. “Or Glenn.”

She paused, blinking for a moment, and Carl realized that he wasn’t the only one holding back tears.

“But he – we – were going to do everything to save you.”

Michonne leaned in closer, lifting up the hand that covered the hated mark on Carl’s arm to cup his other cheek. With her lovingly holding his face, Carl felt five years old again, the memory of his mom doing the same thing whenever he hurt himself or cried after a nightmare. He clutched at the fabric of his jeans to keep from falling apart in such a familiar embrace.

“And no matter how it turned out, that isn’t something either of us regret,” Michonne said, her tone thick with emotion.

Carl was absolutely motionless, feeling like any movement would shatter the fragile moment like it was made of glass.

“Because you and Judith?” She smiled at him through tearful eyes. “You’re all that both of us have left.”

With those words, the dam finally broke and Carl sobbed as he pushed into her open arms. Michonne immediately wrapped him in a tight hug while he kept crying.

Crying for Abraham, for Glenn, for his dad, for Michonne, and for himself. For every bad thing that had happened in such a short span. For every bad thing that would keep happening because of it.

“We’re going to be ok, baby. We’re going to be ok,” Michonne said soothingly.

And as she held him in her arms, safe from the world for a moment, unable to see the awful black mark that was all he had left of that night, he desperately tried to believe her.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I had a really hard time deciding how to end this one and I felt that more of an open ended, sad ending worked best because of how the episode left us. My decision to have Carl open up to Michonne like this is inspired mostly by the S4 finale, which is still one of my fave episodes and permanently cemented this relationship as mother-son to me (also yes, I have Michonne calling him "baby" a few times in this fic, but honestly I don't think that's OOC because at this point he pretty much is ). This'll probably get retconned when the next few episodes roll around but I wanted to get it out of my system anyway.


End file.
